Three in the Green
by flourwings
Summary: There is a pink room at the prow of the ship. This room holds the ship's engine, and the ship's computer. This room is the ship's brig. The door to this room, like every door to every room that it is worthwhile to enter, is locked. But Feferi has fought an Empress. She can break a lock.
1. Chapter 1

Feferi floats deep, and the ocean presses in on her, black and heavy and sweet.

Feferi wakes.

She orients herself quickly, head up and feet down, but it barely matters. Gravity doesn't matter here, not way down deep where the anglerfish swim. The mass of Alternia pulls her down, but the ocean of Alternia holds her up. The water is her second lusus, and it cradles her in its arms. And like her first custodian, she has always shared it with another.

"Where are you?" she shouts, her words glubbing and bubbling upwards. She turns her head and her hair twists after her in a cloudy mass. Her gills flutter violently, sucking the seawater in and in and in, and her heart beats in a panic.

There, in the darkness, floating beneath her. A body.

All around them, the ocean is pink with blood.

"Hello?"

It was difficult to open the airlock from the outside, but Feferi is stronger than she looks. _Strong enough to kill_ , she thinks. There is still pink under her fingernails. She remembers how the Condesce's hands felt around her neck, scaly and sharp-clawed. Not warm like Eridan, the only other troll she had ever touched. But not cold either. The same as Feferi, exactly the same.

"Hello?" she calls again. The water is still pouring in from the airlock— she braces herself against the floor and pushes it closed, her feet slipping in six inches of water.

She wanders the halls of the ship, occasionally calling out. She should be quiet. She should deploy her weapon from her strife deck and turn corners quickly, like a cautious soldier. But she is still only a child.

She wanders past a row of ejection pods, empty except one. The green "in use" light switches off when she opens the door. She coughs at the rotten smell. A automatic voice recording is echoing out of the pod speakers.

"—in deep space. Please wait for atmospheric conditions and try again. Ejection not recommended in deep space. Please—"

Feferi pushes the door shut and throws up all over the floor. Like everything else, her vomit is pink.

"Is there anybody alive in this glubbing ship!" she screams.

She is so tired, and alone. She looks down at the scratches on her arms, still Tyrian and raw. _I'm a killer_ , she thinks, and it's not just because of the dead empress who floats in the blackness outside. No, now she remembers all of them, the countless lusii she has snagged in her net and dragged down, deep down. In the light from Gl'bgolyb's luminous limbs she has seen them, still twitching and bleeding and scared, staring at her with their milky eyes. She thinks of Eridan, the self-styled Orphaner. _How many have I orphaned?_ she wonders.

"Hello," a voice says.

For a heart-stopping moment Feferi is sure it is coming from the rotting soldier in the pod, but then, there— a console in the wall to the left. She approaches it warily.

"Who are you?" she asks.

The console switches off.

There is a pink room at the prow of the ship. This room holds the ship's engine, and the ship's computer. This room is the ship's brig. The door to this room, like every door to every room that it is worthwhile to enter, is locked. But Feferi has fought an Empress. She can break a lock.

"Hello," she says to the room's occupant. He does not reply. _Those horns_ , she thinks, _curious._

"What is your name?"

"I—" he says, but the word cracks. His voice is hoarse with disuse. "I am the Helmsman." His face twitches, a reflexive frown. "But my name—" he wets his lips. "My name…"

He trails off into silence.

"It's okay. My name is Feferi." She approaches him tentatively, trying to meet his eyes, taking each step slowly. She is not being courteous. She is scared.

"Are you hurt?" she asks.

"You sound like her," he says. "Your voice."

"Like who?"

"Do you look like her? I can't see you." The Helmsman coughs, wetly. He moves his head in an absent way. "I can't see anything inside."

"Inside?"

He has been here for years. Sometimes, it is the blackness of space that presses in on him, and he hears the Condesce whispering, but all he can watch are the distant stars. Sometimes, she is gone and he is left alone in the prison he has never seen, and the bright air of a planet flows around his bow and makes him shake. Never before has he done this, though, submerging, swimming under the water. The Condesce had let out a cry of exhilaration as they dived, and hummed her pleasure at returning home. For the Helmsman, all he could think was: _I hope that I will drown._

"Maybe everybody sounds like her. Maybe she sounds like everybody," he says. He doesn't think that this is a trick. Why would she trick him? She has him, she owns him. Why would she open the airlock with brute force and let water spill inside? But if this is not her, where has she gone? And if this is not her, who is it who speaks to him now?

"Are you the Handmaid of Death?" His voice has dropped to a whisper. He remembers the swirl of dark hair, the green dress, the light dripping from her eyes as she floats above them, watching Darkleer nock his arrow. Could this be her, this soft voice? He speaks again, quieter still. "I've been waiting for you."

"N-no—" she begins. The Handmaid of Death. She thinks about the Condesce, breaking under her hands. "I'm not—" she says, but a new idea has already seized him.

"Is it you? Meulin? Meulin, is he here?" He is suddenly frantic, straining against his bonds. He wants to reach her, to touch her wild hair. "Is it time? Mother Maryam, is it you? Is he coming?" He twists and struggles, desperate for the Dolorosa's embrace. "I've missed him so much. I've missed him so, so much."

"I'm sorry," says Feferi, and as always, she truly is. "But my name isn't Meulin." And then, her voice stronger, trying to be proud: "I'm Feferi Peixes. That's my name."

"Peixes?" he whispers. He is still now, still and trying hard to remember something he has long forgotten. He thinks for a long moment, and then there it is. "Peixes!" he crows, triumphant. "Meenah Peixes!" And he begins to laugh.

"Meenah?" Feferi says. "Who's Meenah?"

The Helmsman just laughs and laughs and laughs.


	2. Chapter 2

Up on the surface, the day is growing bright and hot. The trolls are floating in their recuperacoons, submerged like flies trapped in green fluorescent amber. Outside, it is dangerous to even let the sunlight touch your skin.

In all her life, Feferi has never been up there in the daytime. She has never sat at a shuttered door, watched the light seep through the cracks and burn the palm of her curious hand. She has never forgotten to close a window and woken to find a sweep of carpet bleached white. The closest she has ever gotten to the daylight was one early morning, years ago, when even the faint pre-dawn light was muffled by the roiling clouds of a summer storm. She swam just under the surface, the wind-tossed water distorting her view, the waves seizing her and pulling her upwards. One swell lifted her high enough that, as it crested, she could see the vast and turbulent expanse of the sea, stretching out in the semi-darkness for miles and miles. In the distance, a ship appeared, a toy boat tossed by far-off waves. The water fell, and Feferi fell, and the ship was gone.

Mostly, Feferi stays deep, the only light the fluorescence of slow-moving fish and the cold glow of her lusus. She does not need much sleep, and often she will stay awake for days. On the ocean floor, it is so deep down that even Alternia's sun cannot penetrate the water with its harsh light. It's funny, Feferi always thinks. Kanaya always says that she is the only one who can brave the day, but seadwellers can't even tell noon from midnight, if they swim deep and long enough.

"Can you fly the ship out of here?" Feferi asks. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of where the Helmsman is bound. She watches him, though he can't watch her.

"Well, we parked like shit," the Helmsman says, and chuckles hoarsely. He is calmer now. Feferi has been revealed as the princess-now-empress, his salvation. He is now relatively sure he is not dead or dreaming. "We're pressed against a ridge in the ocean floor, and I think a shelf of rock has fallen against us. I don't think I can use the engines to burn us free."

"Do you want me to cut you out?" Feferi asks. For a moment he thinks she is talking about the ship, his strange and second body. But he doesn't have to be the ship anymore.

"Cut me out?" He considers it, wonderingly. How long has it been since he has left this room? He could walk. He could feel the moonlight on his face. He could breath real air. "We're still underwater, with no way up. Well, not for me. I can swim, I think, but—" he angles his head up to expose his neck. "No gills."

"There are escape pods," Feferi says. "I could pull you up."

The Helmsman moves his arms, minutely, cautiously. Is he even still whole? Are his fingers still there, hidden, waiting to be free? Does he want them to be?

"Do it," he says. Feferi's 2x3dent drops into her hand.

It's a messy operation. The pink tethers are tougher than they look, and wetter, and as each breaks it sizzles and sparks with red and blue light. Feferi saws and pulls through the mass, her arms in elbow-deep. She has to climb up to reach the tethers above his head. He thinks he can feel her hair brushing his face, but he isn't sure.

"Does this hurt?" she asks, pulling back back to wipe two pink smears onto her skirt.

"Not really," he says, and she reaches upward again. Psionics buzz briefly between her fingertips and his skin.

"Does that hurt?" the Helmsman asks.

"Not really," she says. She wields the 2x3dent awkwardly above her head. Red and blue illuminates her face, though there is no one to see. Pink tethers, cut loose, hang limply around them. "Oh glub," she says, and there is yellow running down her arm, pooling in the crook of her elbow. The 2x3dent clatters to the floor. "It's fine, it's fine, I must have just nicked your arm. Here we go, we've almost got this one, just a second."

His left arm swings down to slap against his side. She tears off the edge of one side of her skirt to tie up his cut.

"Can you move it?" she asks. His fingers twitch.

"I don't know," he says.

"Okay," she says. She ties off the blue cloth neatly around his arm.

"Okay," she says again, and reequips. "Let's keep going."

His right arm. Feferi lowers it down gently. This hand is in a fist, and she uncurls each finger before proceeding

His head and shoulders. She cuts one tether from the back of his neck, the top of his spine, and with a jerk and a great blue spark he can suddenly see. His eyes are blinded by the dim light of the room. She removes his goggles.

One leg, then the other. As she cuts and tears around them, he leans limply against her shoulder, too weak to hold himself up. Everything feels so different and strange. His tears drip down her back, and she pretends not to notice.

When he is almost free, his legs give out from under him and he slumps sideways to the ground. Half sitting, half falling, he is caught by Feferi and tries and fails to brace himself against her. His arms jerk uselessly, and her knees slip on the wet floor. With one final lurch, he cries out and she pulls him free.

They lie side by side, gasping. They are both bloody with yellow and pink.

"I can't sit up," he says. He feels so small. His bulk and smooth shape is gone, his engines, his metal hull. He watches her sit up and lean blurrily over him, her hair falling over her shoulder. She is smaller even than him. He feels tired, so tired.

"I won't be able to stand," he says.

"Give it a few minutes."

They give it a few minutes. He turns his head so his cheek touches the cold floor.

"Leave me here," he says.

"I won't leave you here," she says.

She carries him.

They leave a trail of yellow and pink through the hall. Feferi sets him down and folds him carefully into an escape pod, one limb at a time.

"You're light," she says. "Skin and bones."

"I've forgotten what they're like," he says.

"What?"

"Skin. Bones."

She stands there for a moment, watching him. She smiles.

"I'll see you up there," she says, and closes the door.

They rise through the water together. The pod is smooth and difficult to grip, but Feferi braces her shoulders against one corner and propels them upward with her legs. Somewhere below them, a body is floating all alone. Feferi kicks and kicks, and they move higher and higher.

It's just after sunset when they break the surface. The air is still hot and smoking and red with the remnants of day. Feferi pulls the Helmsman out of the pod and into the water. The sea is mostly calm, lapping gently at the pod and bearing them slightly up and down. The water washes the blood off of his face and out of his clothes. He breathes in the salty spray. As Feferi swims them steadily to shore, the Helmsman stares up at the marvel of the evening sky.


End file.
